Menu ☰

Tag Archives: dairy

On the rare occasion that I buy sour cream, I really need to use it before it goes bad. That means a lot of cake and muffins are baked in my house, then frozen for future breakfasts. I mean, I don’t want to waste a perfectly good ingredient. In this case, I decided to bake coffee cake, because it’s classic New York cuisine and easy to make for breakfast. I found a recipe in an old issue of Bon Appetit I had lying around, and it was perfect! A thick crumb topping and a nice moist cake.

Passover is next week! Who is busy cleaning, looking for hametz and menu-planning!? Everyone? I thought so! We tend to skip the typical Passover dessert. Cakes made with potato starch and matzo meal just aren’t good; we’ll wait a week for the real thing. But this is different. It’s supposed to be flourless, but it’s not one of those rich, dense flourless cakes. The whipped egg whites and cream make it light and airy. Not only is it delicious on Passover, but it’s beautiful! Continue reading …

When this recipe was republished in the New York Times a few years ago, Jessica and I cut it out and sent our brother to the supermarket right away to buy those eight onions so we could make it for dinner that night. “Eight onions!?!” Marc said? Yes, eight onions. We sliced them by hand that time, but now I have a food processor and discovered the slicing blade, so it was easier this time.

A while back, Stephanie posted about kelsonnes, a traditional Syrian stuffed pasta dish. While many people use pre-made dough, making it from scratch is not so hard. It’s pasta that you can make without a pasta maker, so it’s totally worth it. The stuffed pasta is so giant that you get a ton of cheese, which is amazing. We usually eat these with egg noodles baked with butter. The buttery noodles get nice and crispy, mmm.

The recipe said that it yields 60 kelsonnes. I made 50. It really depends on the thickness of the dough. And no, I don’t serve/eat all of them at once. I usually make about 4 per person (of course we serve this alongside other traditional Syrian foods) and freeze the rest for an easy dinner later in the week.

I made individual bowls of noodles and kelsonnes here. You really don’t have to do that, but I like to take advantage of my oven proof bowls, so I do. If doing it this way, reduce the oven time and watch them closely. You don’t to burn the noodles too much!

Kelsonnes, adapted from the red Deal Delights cookbook:

For the dough:

5 cups flour

2 eggs

Pinch of salt

About 2 cups water

For the filling (I cut the original recipe in half for you – otherwise there is WAY too much leftover cheese):

Before we share a recipe with you, please join us in wishing our sister Rayna a very happy birthday!

And a happy Hanukkah to everyone!

Now, back to food:

When we were in Ireland, we had the most delicious potato gratin at a little cafe on Inishmore, the largest of a group of islands called the Aran Islands. We had to take a ferry there from where we were staying in the amazing town Doolin, and the water was rough, but this recipe was worth getting seasick on the trip back. We spent the day exploring a place much more remote than the island we live on, seeing beautiful old sites and gorgeous green views! This gratin was one of the only vegetarian things on the menu at the cafe, and one of the few things that didn’t include sausage, which is why we ordered it. After the first bite I asked them how the prepared it; I had to recreate it at home!